Learn More About The Characters And Genres From My Books
Tempest North | The Shadow Game | The Eel and the Angel | Two Civil Wars
Book: Tempest North
Character Profiles:
Chad Grittenburg
During the War of 1812, Chad rose through the ranks of the American Navy to captain a privateer. He is a leader of men; fierce, yet caring, educated, and a skilled mariner, whose experience running a shipping company is cut short by tragedy. His self-image rips as he confronts loss after loss, including a fiancé, a business partner, and a favorite crew member. His temperament of stepping up to the next major challenge always helps him shake off his insecurities and blues.
Tall, blue-eyed and dark complected, the twenty-eight year old Chad is the son of a former German naval officer in service to the United States and a half Algonquin mother.
Will Johnson
Will served under Chad in the War of 1812 and would have stayed in the Navy, except that a peacetime officer’s pay can barely keep him clothed and fed. Unable to get the sea out of his system, he joins Chad on a trip to Russian-America and China, while also hoping to gain a little financial security. The twenty-seven year old wiry six foot three Norwegian immigrant is calm, perfectly complimenting Chad’s passion. Will is the perfect wingman.
Reggie Williams
A veteran of the War of 1812, Williams’ ship was captured by Chad in the final days of the war, making Williams an outcast. Now, an aging, bitter man rebuilding his life at sea, Williams is captain of the British Brig, Calcutta, where he is transporting officials, freight, and a guest from London to British holdings north of the Columbia River and then on to the capital of Russian America. His former connection to Chad is hard for him to manage, but when he loses the Calcutta to a storm in the wilds of Russian America, he must count on his former enemy for salvation.
Katarina Gerhardt
Katarina is the twenty year old daughter of a German naval officer in service to the Tsar of Russia and a mother who is cousin to the Tsar. Groomed to become a cultured woman of the world, she is to return to Russia, marry a diplomat and help her country evolve from a peasant kingdom to take its rightful place in European society. After losing her mother, Katarina sets out to find her father at sea. As beautiful as she is bold, the provocations of her trip create self-doubt, and change her dreams forever.
Philippe Jose De La Cruz
Philippe is a twenty-three year old Spanish military officer, sent by his father, the assistant Viceroy of Spanish Mexico, on a diplomatic trip to solicit an alliance with the British and Russians to push back the American advances on the Pacific Coast. A gentleman, he is a man who has never failed, but also a man who has been sheltered. His confidence and arrogance support one flaw: he only sees what he wants to see and only hears what he wants to hear.
Book: Tempest North
1820’s Popular Facts:
The Nantucket, MA whaling ship Essex, sinks after being attacked by a sperm whale. The event inspires Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick.
Presbyterian minister Reverend Sylvester Graham develops “Dr. Graham’s Honey Biskets,” later known as Graham Crackers.
The population in America increases by 33% to nearly 10,000,000.
A pound of butter costs 20 cents and a quart of milk costs 6 cents.
To prove that a tomato is not poisonous, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson eats one in public in Salem, New Jersey.
The first women's college in the United States, Troy Female Seminary, is founded by Emma Willard.
The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper by Atkinson and Alexander.
Book: The Shadow Game
The Hakimi Family aka The Hakimi Corps
The oldest of three HAKIMI brothers – A professor living in Lebanon who was killed in an American airstrike in Syria after being betrayed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (Prologue)
AHMED HAKIMI is the late brother’s confidant and bodyguard.
KARIM HAKIMI is the third brother, an Iranian exile and billionaire living in France who has never given up his dream of a more rational and humanitarian regime in Iran.
LEILA HAKIMI is the widow of the slain Hakimi brother
FARID HAKIMI is Leila’s son, a recent university graduate, who has been groomed for years to be the critical missing piece that will allow the Hakimi Corps to finally change the government of Iran. Farid never suspected that he was a part of an effort to foment a war until the day he graduated.
SARAH is Farid’s affluent American girlfriend, who sees Farid as a spoiled kid who loves to play, with an acquired taste for Scotch. She has no knowledge of the Corps.
REZA was raised in England and is the Corps’ banker and expert on western politics and economics.
SALMAN is from an influential Saudi family and is the Corps’ chief strategist.
MOHAMED is a Suni, an Iranian exile who is based in Turkey and is the Corps’ liaison with the Iranian regime and its opposition.
The Unnamed Experts of the Hakimi Corps:
ONE – Recruited from Pakistan is the technical genius responsible for weaponry.
TWO – An American of Iranian descent responsible for targeting and execution in the USA. THREE – An exiled Iranian responsible for targeting in Iran and to ensure that any attack looks like it was staged by the Americans.
FOUR – A communications and IA specialist and exile from Russia responsible for creating messaging and ensuring that those messages are attributed to either the USA or Iran.
FIVE – A former member of Georgian intelligence is responsible for security.
The Iranians
GENERAL ASHRAF is an army officer in Iran, and head of a secret facility tasked with developing atomic weapons to counter American power in the region. A patriot and traditional officer, he is deeply concerned over the direction the nation is headed.
NADER is a nuclear scientist. His American education is only possible because as a young border guard, during the Iranian revolution, he helped a CIA operative smuggle two people across the border into Russia. He heads the nuclear research managed by General Ashraf, even as he has developed a growing fear over how such weapons might be used.
GENERAL REZA is a confidant of General Ashraf and commander of the Army’s coastal defenses along the Strait of Hormuz. The loss of a son when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard crushed a demonstration has filled him with hate for the Guard and their elite status in the government.
GENERAL HUSSEIN is a general officer of the Revolutionary Guard tasked with quickly deploying a handful of small nuclear weapons to challenge the Americans. This can only be done by interfering in the work of Nader and Ashraf.
Team Walker
THAD WALKER is an aging, wealthy, former CIA operative, living in a bungalow on Montana’s Flathead lake. Whenever CIA director, Mathew Chang, finds himself in a quandary his staff cannot figure out, he reaches out to Walker for some old-style intelligence help.
CHAD GRITT is a multi-generation US Navy military officer. An engineer with the Farragut research facility, this young officer has become the go-to lieutenant on problems that just don’t make sense.
MAJOR OLGA TVORSHIK (US Air Force) is Chad’s girlfriend who is quickly becoming one of the country’s experts in facility security, even though she was born in Russia.
COLONEL BOB PHILLIPS is an expert in tracking and accounting for nuclear weapons around the world.
RAY CALLOWAY is an expert in the military strength and arms in Middle East arsenals.
MARJORIE SMITH is the lead CIA analysis on the Iran Desk.
PINKY SWANSON and WINSTON WANG are data analyst whiz kids with the CIA data research and data mining.
TONY GERANO (from New York), and NANCY OMFIR (from New Orleans) are detectives recruited for their years of old-fashioned investigative work.
CIA
MATHEW CHANG is the director of the CIA, a Korean American whose father was once Korean intelligence.
JANA TAYLOR is the CIA’s newest director, responsible for field operations.
PETE WILSON has been with the agency for decades as director of technology.
Book: The Eel and the Angel
Thadius Walker
Walker is a retired CIA legend. Old school, he has become a troubleshooter for his dear friend Mathew Chang, the Korean American head of the Agency. From a troubled childhood Walker’s intellect, common sense, and persistence made him first in line on crises teams from the Vietnam War to the looming Chinese confrontation. Leaning on a cane, the product of one of many wounds received, he lives with his Gordon Setter, Winchester in a quaint bungalow on the shores of Montana’s Flathead Lake.
Chad Gritt IIX
Chad is the latest in line in a family that has served the nation since the Revolutionary War. The young naval officer is an engineer, tasked with the study of the opponent's weapons systems. His ability to put tiny clues together, to see patterns that even the Navy’s super computers can’t discern is legendary. Six-one, blue eyed with dark hair, he is shy and reserved.
Team Walker
The team led by Walker and Gritt, consist of a retired nuclear arms watchdog, scientists from fields as diverse as marine biology and laser technology, and the CIA’s own technology and operations divisions. Rounding out the group is the leader of a SEAL Team, who has been on the back burner for a year.
Colonel May Washington
Colonel Washington is a computer genius, and commander of a secret Air Force facility disguised as a park in Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands. Repeatedly passing on retirement her family is the military, and her passions all involve using her skills to control technologies so far advanced that they seem impossible. Until now she’s only faced a paper enemy.
General Lisa Johnson
The youngest general in the military, Lisa is the primary Military intelligence liaison with the government in Taiwan. Her PHD is in international relations with an emphasis on China. A combat veteran from the wars in the middle east, she is the military’s go-to on threats from the Communist Party China (CPC). Committed to a strategy where the threatened use of power maintains the peace, she’s never dealt with a situation where that threat has failed until now.
Major Olga Tvorshik
A First generation American, Olga’s widowed mother fled the regime in Russia and married an American businessman. She found a home in the US Air Force and a passion for base security and policing. Stunning, reserved, the early thirties single woman has also found refuge in the remote Alaskan wilderness setting where all of the men are younger and of lesser rank. There are no wolves, canine or human, on the island. Like Colonel Washington, she commands not through power, but by encouraging subordinates to develop their own.
Ma
Ma is a very young intelligence officer of the CPC. Utterly ruthless when faced with getting the assigned job done, he was educated in the US and loves jerking the tail of the American Government. A strikingly handsome man, he is responsible for dozens of deep plant spies in the western US.* He avoids direct conflict and anything else that might disrupt his international good life. An expert on the US, he is forced out of his comfort zone on the direct orders of the Chinese President.
*Ma introduces us to several spies, from a cute college student blackmailed into romancing an engineer at Boeing to a sensual travel agent working for Ma for the thrill and the money. One of his top agents is a young man whose only motivation is to stay alive.
General Yang
Like General Johnson, Wang is the youngest intelligence general in the CPCA, the army of the party. He’s risen like a rocket through pushing the limits on policy, personnel, and direct confrontation with China’s enemies. Hated by the establishment he gets results, and commands through the power of his personal ego and confidence, overriding anyone who disagrees with him. His success has afforded him almost veto power over more senior leaders who he considers passive and overcautious.
Captain
The man known throughout the Naval division of the Army of the CPC as Captain, spent his life undersea, with submarine commands from the time he was 33 for more than three decades. He is a cautious man who has never failed on a mission, many of which were intelligence missions so secret that neither the enemy nor even most of the CPC will ever know about. A reserved, traditional man of honor and generosity, he is worshiped by his crews because he always gets them home.
Book: Two Civil Wars
Primary Protagonists
Chad Gritt is the son of a shipping family from Boston. A little above average height, his father was German and his mother Scottish and Algonquin, giving him blue eyes, dark hair, a tan complexion, and a wiry frame. He’s well educated and has the judgment and skills of a sea captain.
He volunteered to fight aboard a Union warship during the American Civil War, where his visions of himself as a gallant warrior were tempered by the brutality of actual combat. Single, and a bit shy, he is a born leader, but a reluctant hero, one raised to do what is right.
Thomas Mead is a Colonel in the Union Army, who loses an arm to Confederate gunfire while trying to escape capture when he is discovered as a spy. A middle-aged bachelor married to duty; he becomes a trouble shooter for President Lincoln. A born hero, he is forced into a more cautious life by his disability.
His experience and judgment become his greatest asset. Mead’s common sense make everyone around him better, especially when faced with crises and danger. He becomes Gritt’s mentor.
Political Antagonist and Ally
Miles Standish Pierce is an undersecretary of state in the Lincoln administration. A Rhode Island blue blood, he is well educated, wealthy, and full of himself. Pierce has carefully avoided anything dangerous and knows little of everyday life skills. His small frame and slight build are overcompensated for by his blustery nature. His international dealings always seem to include new wealth for himself.
Pierce is thrown into the dangers faced by Gritt and Mead, with a passion for saving his own skin. At the same time, those dangers fill him with passion and a thrill for life he has never known.
Primary Antagonist
Captain Barkston Jackson is the commander of a Confederate States of America commerce raider destroying ships and commerce of the United States along the Pacific Coast. Jackson is medium height, in his early fifties and full of hate for the enemy that has destroyed his family, his home and inheritance.
General Lee’s surrender launches Jackson on a final vendetta to damage the Union and somehow offer something to the Confederate Loyalist officers who have lost everything in the war. The loss of the Confederacy leads Jackson’s moral compass to spin out of control.
Characters that glue the story together
Denali Bonita de la Cruz is the daughter of one of Mexico’s most powerful landed families. Educated in Paris, she defies most of the conservative culture she was raised in. Instead of studying music and art as her father planned, she embraced the wild life of France and became a nurse, and a secret opponent of the Royalist cause her father fights for.
Denali is in her early twenties, dark haired, and stunning with her tongue as cutting as her body. Her instant attraction after meeting Gritt leads them both into a passionate secret affair. But Denali has a short attention span except for the Juarez revolutionary cause which drives her.
Maria Huerta is Denali’s cousin and the widow of a Royalist officer executed by his own brother after a battle. She is a few years older than Denali and clings to the traditional values she grew up with. Blond, and traditionally elegant, she is quietly enraged by both sides of Mexico’s Civil War.
Maria is a moderating influence and is critical to the survival of most of the other characters, as she is highly respected by the rich and powerful of Mexico and by the elite around Emperor Maximillian of the Hapsburgs, the royal leader imported by Mexico’s landed wealthy and the Catholic Church to crush the Juarez movement.
Captain Patrick Kelley is the skipper of a fast steamship, the only Navy ship of the Free State of Jones, a breakaway part of the Confederacy that declared its independence from both North and South. Kelley spent the Civil War Years raiding commerce from both sides and running contraband between the southern ports of Cuba and Mexico.
Kelley’s shock of red hair pushing from his ever-present captain’s cap, signals his temperament. But the war is over now, and the Free State of Jones and its agents have been labeled outlaws by both sides in the American Civil War. He binds himself to Gritt’s group trying desperately to leave Mexico, his outlaw knowledge critical to their success. His reward, their help to go home.
